God Gave Them Up

The Righteous Shall Live By Faith

Verse 17 is where we finished

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

Contrast

God’s wrath is revealed.

God’s righteousness against human unrighteousness

God is Righteous and Humans Are Not

Saving faith believes this truth.

The moment we decide in our hearts that we know better than God what is good we are swept back into the garden, hearing Satan’s seductive lie that we now proclaim ourselves, “Did God really say?”

John calls Jesus the Word of God made flesh

Romans 1:18–32 ESV

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

God’s Eternal Power and Divine Nature is Revealed (18-20)

We all know inherently about God and His Creation

This is not saving knowledge, but inviting knowledge

God wants us to know that He exists and uses nature and natural laws to lead us to a more full knowledge of Himself.

The unrighteous suppress the truth

This is Paul’s argument against non-believers and it was Jesus’s argument against false religious leaders.

How do they suppress the truth? in their unrighteousness.

We are going to see how they suppress it, although many of you experience it every week.

It starts with...

The Unrighteous Refuse to Bow Before His Eternal Power and Divine Nature (21-23)

Romans 1:21–23 ESV

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

People go out of their way to avoid calling God, God.

Universe

Science

They will resort to other religions before accepting Christ.

It is our sinful desires that make us look for an alternative to the God we understand exists.

We want a God we can make in our image.

so, people proclaim themselves wise, with no proof other than they have pondered this for a long time.

And then they declare their ways to be better than God’s.

Foolish hearts are darkened

hard to see the truth

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom.

An exchange takes place

There are still many idols in the original sense

The great minds of the first world carve their idols in books and speeches

People put forth worldviews as idols that must be bowed before

Our racial strife is full of this kind of idolatry

You must accept this truth or you are less than us.

those who refuse to espouse their ideology, their truth statements, are considered ignorant, unlearned.

Ideas that are true do not need to be forced

it should be plain to see

it should take some serious effort to argue against them

Truth does not need to be argued into existence

It’s objective, so it just is true

The Unrighteous Refusal to Bow Leads God to Give Them Up to Wrath (24-32)

We can see the wrath of God as expressed if we acknowledge it as such

Those whose eyes and hearts are not darkened can see the expressions of God’s wrath all around

We see the misery

And we know of the misery to come

God giving them up is that wrath

I would argue that when God removes His restraining hand from our minds, we become the darkness

The human mind is capable of incredible evil

God uses our conscience to keep a lid on those evils

But when we push against Him hard enough, He removes His hand

and the resulting evil is the wrath of God

Our experience of things unloving is what God’s wrath feels like

Then magnify it to the nth degree and you have hell

Hell is outer darkness, without God, forever

The flames are the passions of humans unbridled, without restraint, forcing our wills on one another.

Know what you are participating in when you are unloving!

As we read on I want to make another important point.

Homosexuality is not the focus, only an example

The confusion of love is at the center of our human condition

This is one of the definitive statements on the sin of homosexuality, but it is not the focus of the passage.

Paul is writing from Corinth

mountain, aphrodite, sexual perversion of their worship

Paul is saying, look at that perversion of God’s law and look what it brings.

Three truths about homosexuality

sin, its not about love, the church is meant to share love, not hate

The point Paul is making is that sins take us to unnatural places, evil places

Rejection Opens the Door to many hateful ways

When we fail to love, we become all of the impurities of this life.

28-31 is a list of unloving acts

Those impurities cause much of the pain of this life

But because we have laid claim to our own wisdom as truth we are justified in being unloving. darkness

The ultimate turn from God is when people approve of sin

Homosexuality is not the base level of sin, approval of sin is.

It is when we get to a point where we trust our wisdom so much that we reject God’s wisdom, but now silently in our hearts, we proclaim that what God has declared evil is in fact good.

Isaiah 5:20–21 ESV

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!

Which takes us full circle

In verse 17 we are told that the righteousness of God has been revealed, and so is His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people.

It Is Time to Repent!

the bad news is that we are all sinners, unloving in our own ways, and God’s wrath is on us.

But God sent His only Son, Jesus, to live the perfect life, not only as an example, but as an offering to the Father.

He then allowed Himself to be sacrificed on a cross, to make the full payment for our sins.

The Father showed His acceptance of the sacrifice by resurrecting Jesus from the dead.

It is now by faith in Jesus that we have forgiveness of sins and life eternal.

Give your life to Him today and be healed.

And Christians, as we bow before the Almighty, you make sure and confess any ways in which you have failed to acknowledge His ways as supreme.

You cannot effectively worship if you are not fully bowed before Him.